AU, follows Gonna Be the One but can be read as a standalone. In the midst of business problems, assassination attempts, and mutant attacks, Lex find his balance with the obsessive teenage alien that he's taken into his life. ClarkLex SLASH.

Life with Clark was
infinitely more complicated than life without Clark.

Lex
had never lived
with anyone before- not since he was a child in Lionel's home. And to
start off with someone like Clark… Well, it probably wasn't the best
idea he'd ever
had.

He was used to
holding people at a distance, not letting anyone get close. More than anything, he was used to being by himself,
and it took one hell of an adjustment to get used to Clark, because Clark was there all
the time.

Sprawling out on the
couch in his office during the evenings, reading a paperback while Lex finished
up the day's work. Sleeping the guest
bedroom of the penthouse, separated from Lex by nothing more than a wall. In the kitchen every morning when Lex got up,
waiting for him with breakfast and a smile.
Sprawled in a chair in a corner with his laptop while Lex worked in his
office, doing work for the online college courses he was taking. Seated always directly on Lex's left during
meetings, looking both casual and casually menacing. Looking mature in a suit during business
lunches and elegant in tuxes during charity dinners and society functions and
casually gorgeous in jeans and t-shirts with sunglasses shading his green eyes
when Lex went out and let himself be seen by the paparazzi.

The press fucking loved Clark, speculated endlessly on
exactly who he was and what he was doing with Lex, but Clark
never talked to them. They never found
out his last name, his town of origin, or the fact that he was an alien. Any time they asked if he was really Lex's
bodyguard or something more, Clark just smiled
at them and turned away, and they were left frothing at the mouth in a fury of
frustrated journalistic curiosity.

Lex had a hard time
adjusting to Clark's constant presence, but he
had a surprisingly easy time adjusting to Clark himself. Clark was a chameleon, shifting like water to
fill whatever role was required of him, and though Lex always felt like he was
underfoot simply because he was always there, Clark
was never actually in his way. In fact, there
were many parts of his life that ran much smoother thanks to Clark's
presence.

For example, potential
investors that met him during Lex's business meetings were either terrified of
him or fascinated by him, or sometimes both.
Either way, the unusual distraction gave Lex an extra edge that he
ruthlessly took advantage of, and when he mentioned it to Clark later, Clark just laughed it off and left Lex wondering if he
did it on purpose.

Life with Clark was strangely domestic and after a few weeks,
strangely easy. The only thing that kept
Lex from being completely comfortable around him was the fact that he knew Clark
was interested in him. The fact that Clark never made anything that could actually be
construed as a move didn't lessen his anxiety on that score on iota. He knew that Clark
was still pursuing him, in his slow, relentless, entirely subtle way, and he
knew that one day, he'd have to deal with that.
He didn't want to think about exactly how he was going to deal with it,
since he suspected that it was going to end up with him on his hands and knees
with Clark fucking him, so he mostly ignored
it. That day wasn't going to be today,
and as long as it wasn't today everything was fine.

"Fuck," Lex muttered to himself. "Stupid, motherfucking son of a…"

"Something wrong?" Clark asked. He
was sprawled out on the couch, his head on one armrest and his bare feet on the
other, with a paperback propped up on his stomach. Something by Nietzsche, and Lex really didn't
want to think about why Clark was so obsessed
with those particular writings.

"The numbers won't
add up," Lex said, aware that he was whining and not really caring. It had been a long fucking day, and this was
just the icing on the shit cake. "This
was the last goddamn thing to do today, and I really just want to go to sleep,
and I can't get the motherfucking numbers to add up."

Clark
set the book down and stood up in one smooth movement. "Let me look," he said, and was at Lex's side
in one of those faster-than-human-sight blurring movements, peering over his
shoulder at the computer screen.

Lex tried not to
tense up. He hated people peering over
his shoulder like this- part reflexive desire to hide what he was doing, which
was perfectly reasonable considering how many people tried to steal information
from him, and part general uneasiness that he felt every time Clark
got this close.

But Clark had absolutely no interest in Lex's company beyond
its connection to Lex, and he knew more inside secrets than Lex's executive
assistant as it was. And he should be
used to Clark's closeness, since Clark had a
habit of taking every chance he got to get close to Lex. It was part of the pattern that he was trying
to ignore, and steadily failing to do so.

"Huh," Clark said. He
reached around to nudge Lex's hand away from the mouse. Lex tried to feel annoyed.

"There is such a
thing as asking for permission before you take over someone's computer, you
know," Lex said. He could feel Clark's shrug against his shoulder blades.

"Not for me," Clark said, and started scrolling down through the
spreadsheet much faster than Lex's eye could follow. Apparently super-speed worked for reading,
too. Lex was becoming much more blasé
about Clark's powers after three weeks of
seeing them in action constantly, but it was still sometimes a surprise.

"There," Clark said, stopping on a page that looked exactly like
every other one. "Your decimal point is
off two places." He pointed to one cell,
and Lex tilted his head backwards so that he could look Clark
in the face.

"How the hell did
you find that?" he demanded, and Clark
grinned, which looked a little weird upside-down.

"I have a
photogenic memory," he said. "Plus, I
like math."

"You..." Sometimes, Lex just didn't have words. Clark tended
to have that effect on him. "Right. Remind
me to make you help me with some of this in the future."

"Sure thing," Clark said, and went back to the sofa and his book.

They were eating
breakfast when the phone rang. Lex
looked around in confusion, since that was most definitely not his cell phone-
Clark had programmed the ring tone to be the Darth Vader theme last time he got
his hands on it, and Lex hadn't figured out how to switch it back- and anyone
who ever wanted to get ahold of him always called either his cell or his office
line.

"Phone's ringing," Clark said, pointing out the obvious with his mouth full
of pancakes. He usually ate at human
speed when he was eating with Lex, though Lex had once seen him put away a
double-sized lunch in less than thirty seconds.
It had been a memorable sight.

"Well, yes," Lex
said. "But I don't know where it
is. I didn't even know we had a phone."

Clark
pointed to the phone, which was sitting on the counter next to the toaster, in
plain sight. Lex sighed and got up to
answer it.

"Lex Luthor," he
said, his voice a little short because he hated it when people interrupted
his breakfast. Lunch and dinner tended to be business
propositions, and he loved the one meal a day that was his own, personal time.

Lex went completely
still and looked at Clark, who continued eating his pancakes without any
appearance of a care in the world. Lex
knew that Clark could hear him- according to Clark the super-hearing had kicked
in one memorable night at Atlantis about a month before Lex found him, during
an incident that included a blindfold, a feather, and whipped cream- but Clark showed no outward reaction to the fact that his
mother was on the phone.

"He's here," Lex
said. "Did you want to talk to him?"

"Oh, please," she
sighed, and Lex wordlessly held out the phone.
Clark looked at it, shook his head, and
went back to his breakfast.

Lex sighed, but
he'd been expecting this. Clark focused on very little that didn't involve Lex in
some way, and he completely ignored any mention of his old life. Lex had been expecting this phone call ever
since Clark had attached himself to Lex's side like a very attractive limpet,
but he'd been hoping that it would come later, when Lex had had more time to soften
Clark towards actually answering it.

"He won't talk," Lex
said after bringing the phone back up to his ear.

"What do you mean,
he won't talk?" she demanded. But Lex
could hear the upset in her voice- she knew.
She knew what Clark was like now, and he suspected that she'd pinned her
hopes on this phone call knowing that Clark
wouldn't want to listen. That took an
incredible amount of bravery, and Lex actually felt sorry for her.

"I mean, he can
hear every word we're saying, and he won't take the phone," Lex said.

"You did something
to him."

Lex felt his pity
fade fast. "I didn't have to," he
snapped. "Which I'm sure you know. If it makes you feel better to think that I
corrupted your son, feel free. But believe
me when I say that I couldn't make Clark do a
damn thing that he didn't want to do, and I doubt you could do any better."

The sounds of soft
crying filtered down the line, and Lex ignored the pity that tried to rise
again in favor of holding onto his anger.
"Look, call back sometime that's not breakfast time, and I'll put you on
speakerphone," he said. "You can talk to
him as much as you like, and maybe then you won't accuse me of trying to keep
you away from your son." He hung up by
slamming the receiver down, and the plastic cracked. Well, so much for that phone. He hated it when people accused him of things
he didn't do, when there were far too many things that he had done that people
forgot simply because of his name and influence.

"You're wrong, you
know," Clark said, chewing thoughtfully. He'd finished his terrifyingly tall stack of
pancakes and had moved onto the bacon.
Lex was suddenly reminded that there was at least one person who didn't
give a damn about his name or influence, though he had yet to figure out
exactly why Clark had fixated on him.

"What am I wrong
about?" Lex asked, relaxing. At least he
had Clark.

"I'd do anything you
asked me to," Clark said. His voice was somewhere between utterly
serious and completely casual. "I'd lie
or kill on just a word from you."

Then he went back
to his bacon.

Lex fucking loved
board meetings. There was nothing like
the rush he got from standing at the head of the long table and controlling the
proceedings, knowing that all of his board members wouldn't ever dare challenge
him. They respected him, feared him- and
the constant presence of Clark didn't hurt,
either.

Of course, most
board meetings didn't include a crazy man bursting in through the door and
waving a gun around like it was the flag at a gay pride parade.

"You're gonna pay,
Luthor!" the man snarled. Lex had no
idea who he was, but figured that he was most likely another ex-employee,
especially as his next words were, "You're gonna pay for what you put me
through!"

"You really need to
stop doing this," Clark commented from his
left. Lex turned on him in outrage.

"The hell? I need to stop? What about them?"

"They need to stop
too," Clark said, and sent a truly vicious
glance in the man's direction. It was
angry enough that Lex briefly worried that the heat-vision would kick in, but the
madman remained unaffected, save for a nervous expression from the
maliciousness in Clark's gaze.

Lex watched with
something like amusement as the man visibly went through a mental
shoulder-squaring and steadied his quavering gun-hand. He knew, with the surety of absolute fact,
that while Clark was in the room this man was
no danger to him, or anyone else except maybe himself. Therefore, the man's threats ceased to be
anything actually threatening, and were just plain funny.

The man opened his
mouth, presumably to start another rant, and Clark
just held up one hand. The man shut his
mouth with a snap, and Clark smiled at
him. Looking at that expression, Lex
decided that he'd be growing pale with fear, too, if that look was aimed at
him.

"Don't," Clark said. "If
you put the gun down, I won't have to hurt you." He smiled a big, toothy, dangerous
smile. "Please don't put it down. This is the most fun I've had all day."

The man put the gun
down.

Clark
sighed and relaxed back into his seat as two security guards came bursting into
the room, handcuffs at the ready. He
hadn't even had to get out of his chair; in fact, his boots were still propped
on the table.

"I'm impressed,"
one of the board members said, coming up to Clark
with a calculating smile. "What are your
rates? I could use someone like you."

"Not interested," Clark said, not even bothering to look over. "I'm not for sale."

Lex smiled as the
board member turned white, then red with anger.
"Perhaps you shouldn't make the mistake of trying to hire my employees
out from under me, Mr. Wulfen. I tend to
take offense."

Mr. Wulfen turned
pale again and beat a hasty retreat, and Lex smiled to himself. Sometimes, it fucking rocked to be him.

The thing about Clark was, he couldn't be boxed. Lex couldn't categorize him and file him
neatly away in his proper compartment, because there was nothing, no idea, no concept
that could possibly contain the entirety of Clark. He was whoever he needed to be, and at the
same time he was like nothing and no one but himself. He played video games and did complex
theoretical math with the same level of concentration. He offered to kill for Lex over the breakfast
table. He had incredible powers and genius-level
intelligence, and yet seemed to be completely content with becoming Lex's
shadow.

Lex thought that he
was like a cat, filled with actions that seemed completely arbitrary, but in
reality cats just didn't care enough about people's opinions to do anything but
exactly what they wanted to. Some of
them were devoted to a certain person, but they were all independent, and the
only thing Lex worried about was the inevitable day when Clark
decided to go back to his own independence and left Lex alone.

Because Lex had
more than just gotten used to him being around; he'd grown to depend on
it. He'd never before realized how alone
he was until Clark was there, by his side or
at least in the same apartment for every single hour of the day. And he knew that Clark was meant for much
greater things than to be with him, and so the only thing that he truly feared
was the day that Clark realized this and left.

Lex used to hate
the publicity that surrounded his every move, just because of an unfortunate
accident of birth that caused him to be the son of Lionel Luthor. In his teens and early twenties he'd rebelled
against that fact with everything he had- if they wanted to see an evil Luthor
child, he'd give them one! His very
brief time in Smallville had given him reason to reevaluate his choices, and
these days he was a respectable businessman.
But he always hated the press.

Until Clark came along. Clark made a simple thing like going out to dinner an
adventure, even though there was always some moron lurking with a camera. Clark, when
given sufficient reason, was more wittily sarcastic than Lex himself, and the paparazzi
were his favorite target.

Sometimes, however,
he just didn't feel like going out. As
entertaining as Clark's pithy comments and lazy posing could be, it was
infinitely more fun to stay in and watch Clark
cook. Clark used his superpowers to best
advantage whenever they were alone, and Lex always enjoyed the quiet evenings
when he'd sit at the counter and watch as Clark boiled water with heat vision, chopped
faster than the eye could see, and picked up the refrigerator every time he
dropped something under it, which happened far too often for Clark to not be
doing it deliberately.

"Your mom called
again," Lex said, nibbling on a leftover stick of celery. Clark looked
up from the salad he was tossing.

"Yeah, but she
loves you," Lex said, almost disbelieving the words as they came out of his own
mouth. "Not everyone has that kind of
good luck. You should at least talk to
her."

"She doesn't know
me," Clark said. "She loves the kid I was before, but she
doesn't have the faintest clue who I am now."

"That doesn't stop
her from loving you," Lex said. "That's
what mother's love is, or so I'm informed."
Bitterness was a trait that he'd long ago cultivated, with plenty of
reason.

"She doesn't know
me," Clark said. "No one does but you."

"Do I?" Lex
asked. Sometimes he wasn't sure. Clark was so
many things, so incredibly, beautifully complex, that most of the time Lex
thought he was a mystery that he'd never be able to unravel.

"Yes," Clark said. "Even
if you don't know it yet."

Lex settled back
against the counter and chewed on his celery.
He had a lot to think about.

Evenings were Lex's
favorite times these days. Clark had largely given up on extra-curricular reading in
favor of helping Lex with business, and Lex's stock prices thanked him. Clark turned out to be talented with some of
the more theoretical, untested sciences, and Lex found himself focusing more on
things that Clark paid attention to than he might have otherwise. The Cadmus Labs division of LexCorp flourished
under the extra attention, and Lex remembered that LexCorp had been based on
experimental science, which allowed him to tailor his business to better suit
the needs of his company and the current market.

Being a CEO fucking
rocked.

It wasn't just the increased
market value of his company that caused Lex to enjoy his evenings,
however. It was Clark's
company. It never made much sense to him
when he thought about it, since he had Clark's
company from breakfast till bedtime, but he supposed it was the quality of the
time that made the difference. During
the day they were in separate worlds, doing their own separate tasks, despite
the fact that they were side-by-side.
But in the evenings the two worlds collided, so to speak, and Lex could
enjoy the fact that Clark was right there,
with him, and not mentally somewhere else.

"Hey, I finished
going through that robotics report," Clark said, holding up a sheaf of papers. He always worked lying on his stomach on the
floor, and Lex spent more time than he'd like just staring at him, secure in
the knowledge that Clark couldn't see him
watching. It was the little pleasures
that made life worth living.

"What do you
think?" Lex asked, looking up from the pile of papers on his own desk. "I looked it over and it seemed viable."

"I spotted a few
inconsistencies in the proposal, but otherwise it looks great," Clark said. "If
they manage it they'll be several steps closer to achieving true artificial
intelligence."

"Ah, just thinking
about the market possibilities of that…"
Lex trailed off with a happy sigh.
"Life is good."

Clark
rolled over onto his back, carefully avoiding the spread-out piles of papers,
and smirked at him. "Lex Luthor, out to
rule the world, one dollar at a time."

"There's nothing
wrong with a little healthy ambition," Lex protested, smiling despite
himself. Clark
laughed and stretched; Lex's breath caught in the back of his throat.

Clark
rolled to his feet easily and gathered up the papers into a neat pile, which he
placed on Lex's desk. "I'm going to head
to bed, since I finished this up," Clark
said. He was leaning over, his palms
flat on the desk, and smiling at Lex from a too-short distance. "You coming any time soon?"

For a brief,
horrible moment Lex thought that Clark was
inviting him to bed with him, but…
"Soon," he said. "I'll see you in
the morning."

Clark
nodded, withdrew from Lex's personal space, and sauntered out of the room. Lex took a deep breath and tried to pretend
that he didn't feel like he'd been hit by a truck.

Six in the morning,
and for some reason Lex was awake. Too
unsettled from the Important Moment that Wasn't last night to sleep well,
though he knew Clark was sleeping like a
baby. No troubled conscience when you
didn't have one, he supposed.

He could go into
the kitchen and start breakfast for a change, but that would bring Clark out of
his room, and Lex didn't want Clark to wake up
just yet. Clark
was only well and truly asleep in the wee hours of the morning, and then only
if he'd been asleep for several hours. It
was rare that Lex was actually awake for this time of day, and so when it
happened he took every advantage he got.
There were still some things that he wouldn't do with Clark
in the room, and this was one of them.

He picked up the
phone and dialed a number that had become familiar over the past few weeks. He knew that it would pick up after a couple
of rings because she was always awake right now.

"Kent Farm,"
Martha's pleasant voice said softly into the receiver, and Lex smiled to
himself.

"It's Lex."

"Oh, hello, Lex,"
she said, her voice warming immediately.
"I wasn't sure when you were going to call next."

Lex shrugged, even
though she couldn't see it. "You know
how it is. I'm so busy recently." I'm
hiding from your son, though I have no doubt he knows exactly what I'm doing
anyway.

"I know," she said
sympathetically. And Martha Kent
actually did. She'd been a city girl
once upon a time, and she understood some of what it meant to be in charge. "But you're doing alright?"

"I'm doing fine,"
he reassured her. "How's the farm?"

"Doing more than
fine, as I'm sure that you know," she said.
Her voice held a slightly chiding note.

"I don't know what
you're talking about," he said innocently.

"Oh, so the sudden
influx of expensive orders from Metropolis has nothing to do with you?" she
demanded. He grinned and allowed himself
a brief moment to savor his success.

"Absolutely not,"
he said. "It's all thanks to your
product. Of course, I may have dropped a
word or two here or there, but your produce, not to mention your pies, sells
itself."

"I'd
tell you that
you shouldn't have, but I've never been one to cut off my nose to spite
my
face," Martha said, and Lex could hear the grin in her voice. "So how's
business on the CEO end of the scale? Or are lowly organic produce
farmers not
meant to hear of such things?"

"Actually, I
suspect that you're better qualified than half my board members," he said with
a laugh. "And things are going quite
well. We've managed to cut quite a bit
of extraneous costs thanks to the calculations that Clark
did." He paused, his voice trailing away
on Clark's name. Not because Clark was a forbidden topic
between them, but because he wasn't yet ready to think about the evening
before, with Clark leaning across his desk and
the intensity in those green eyes. Clark was intent on accomplishing something that Lex wasn't
sure he wanted to happen, and he didn't know how to handle it.

"Clark
always was good at math," Martha said wistfully. They had talked five times in the past few
weeks, since that first conversation that interrupted his breakfast, and she
eventually came to accept that Clark was doing
exactly what he wanted to do, with no outside pressure from Lex. In fact, Lex's rueful awareness of the inevitability
of the situation is what eventually convinced her, and so now she spoke of her
son with longing but not grief. She knew
that he had found his niche, and while it wasn't the one she would have chosen
for him, it was obviously the one he had chosen for himself.

All these things
she had told him in earlier conversations, but never anything so simple as
this. Lex found himself insanely curious
about Clark's childhood, and it wasn't
something he knew how to ask Clark himself.

"He's
brilliant at
it," Lex told Martha. He'd learned that
the more he told her about Clark as he was today, things that she
couldn't find
in the gossip rags, the more she was willing to tell him about the
Clark that Lex had never had a chance to know. "He's faster than a lot
of the programs on my
computer." Literally, considering Clark's superspeed, but Lex didn't
say that aloud. They didn't talk about Clark's
powers or origins, though Lex could tell that Martha knew perfectly
well that
Lex himself knew. The words were never
said aloud, but they were there nonetheless.

"He's a special
boy," Martha agreed. "I'm glad that he's
an asset to you."

"He's more than
just an asset to my company, Mrs. Kent," Lex rushed to say. Silence fell on the other end of the line, and
Lex realized how that sentence could have been misconstrued.

He was going to say
something witty and thoughtful. Really,
he was. But what actually spilled out of
his mouth in response to Martha Kent's measuring silence was, "I think he's my
best friend."

Stupid, he berated
himself. Clark
wasn't his friend. Clark
wanted him and obsessed about him, but that wasn't nearly the same thing as
friendship. So stupid to depend on
Clark's presence, and to feel like Clark was
the only one who he'd ever really trusted.

There was a long,
terrible moment, and then- "Oh, honey. If anyone deserves a friend like Clark can be, it's you."

He didn't have an
answer for that, so he changed the subject.
They exchanged small talk for another couple of minutes or so, and then
Lex hung up the phone. He sat forward in
bed and buried his face in his hands, feeling like a complete and utter failure
to his upbringing as a Luthor.

"Hey," Clark said from the doorway, and Lex snapped his head up
to stare at him.

Clark offered him
the gentlest smile this incarnation of Clark
had, and said, "I always do, Lex." He
turned, looked like he was about to leave the room, and Lex tried and failed to
think of something to keep him here. As
if anything could ever tie Clark down.

And then Clark paused, and glanced back at Lex. "You were right, by the way." Short but still painful pause, and then he said,
"We are best friends."

"Why?" Lex asked,
before he could sensor himself. Clark offered a twisted smile that was probably one of
the most real expressions Lex had seen on his face in the months that they'd
known each other.

"Because nowhere in
all the universe would I ever find someone like you, Lex," Clark
said. "There was a reason I chose you,
that night at the bar." He nodded to
Lex, acknowledging something that Lex couldn't quite understand, and then he
was gone from the doorway. His voice drifted
out of the kitchen half a second later.

"Waffles or
pancakes?" he demanded, and Lex, unable to think about anything right then,
yelled back, "French toast!"

It was the third
time Clark had foiled a gunman, and the fourth
time he saved Lex's life. Lex lay
sprawled on the pavement in front of his building, rubbing his head where it
had connected painfully with the cement, and wondered if this was going to
become even more of a pattern with them than it already was.

Clark
was there in a flash, worry in his dark green eyes as he crouched over
Lex. "Are you alright?" he
demanded. "I didn't see the guy till the
last minute, and I couldn't quite catch the bullet in time."

There is a hole in Clark's shirt over his stomach, a small hole about the
size of a bullet. "So you pushed me away
and took it yourself," Lex said, his voice numb with shock. It was only barely believable, even with all
that he knew about Clark.

"Well, yeah." Clark ran a
brief hand over his stomach, which was tight unmarred skin over ridged
muscle. "It's not like it can hurt me."

No, Lex supposed it
couldn't. Lex would always be surprised
by Clark's invulnerability. The strength and speed and heat vision and
x-ray vision were things that he saw and understood every day, but a complete
inability to be hurt was always going to be incomprehensible.

"I'm fine," he
said, when Clark's worried look didn't
abate. "The back of my head is a little
bruised, but it'll fade in a couple of hours."

"That's right, you heal
fast," Clark said, as if he forgot. Lex suspected that Clark
forgot nothing, especially when it came to Lex, but didn't call him on the tiny
ruse. Sometimes the stupid games between
people were necessary, even for them.

"That I do," Lex
said, and held out his hand. Clark
grabbed it and hauled Lex to his feet so fast that Lex's head spun and he fell
against Clark's chest.

"Um," Lex said,
trying to ignore the fact that his cheek was pressed against an absolutely
lovely bicep, but Clark just laughed and set
him back on his feet, resting one big hand on his arm to steady him.

Clark's hand
lingered, though, instead of falling away immediately, and Clark's
gaze was intent and focused. Lex was
frozen by that look, not ready to move forward but not sure how to move away.

Distant shouting,
quickly growing closer, snapped them both out of the trance they'd fallen
into. Clark
glanced around quickly and spotted the bystanders and cops that were heading
their way, and Lex barely had time to feel upset about that fact before there
were strong arms around him and the world was a blur.

Clark
set him down in their living room floor just a few seconds later, looking
perfectly composed. "I'll deal with the
cops," he said, and jerked his head towards the bathroom. "Get something for the bruise, will you?"

And then he was
gone, leaving Lex with a slight headache and a great deal of confusion.

Lex had been to a
thousand society affairs in his time, and this one was no different than
any. There were beautiful women and men
in extremely expensive clothes, older women and men in expensive clothes,
waiters, and the stench of bullshit. Normally
Lex did his duty and got out as soon as possible, one habit that he hadn't
broken even with Clark, and Clark's acidic
sense of humor, by his side.

Tonight, however,
he had a goal. A goal that had nothing
to do with business, or politics, and certainly nothing to do with Clark.

He hadn't gotten
laid since Clark had entered his life, and he
was going to correct that lack tonight, with any one of the hordes of
beautiful, available women that flocked to this sort of dinner looking for just
the sort of fun he had in mind. He
surveyed the room with a practiced eye, and let his gaze be caught by a pair of
brown eyes that looked absolutely nothing like Clark's.

He moved across the
room quickly, leaving Clark leaning casually
against the wall. He knew that Clark
wasn't going to follow him this time, though he was interested to see how he
would react later, when Lex was taking her home with him and needed Clark to clear off for a while.

"Victoria," he said, as he came up to her
side. "I haven't seen you in an age."

She turned to him,
long dark brown hair swinging gently against the skin of her back that was
bared by an absolutely stunning red dress.
"Lex," she said, looking happily surprised to see him, as if she hadn't
been deliberately trying to catch his attention. Ah, he'd missed these games. "How's business?"

"Better than ever,
now that I've got my own," Lex said. "And
how is your father?"

"Rich and getting
richer," Victoria
said. "You know how it is."

"Yes, I do," Lex
said. "You're still working for him?"

"It's a good place
to be," Victoria
said. She leaned another intoxicating inch
closer. "You could come over to our side
of the pond, see what I mean."

Lex
sighed. He should have expected this. "Victoria,
I have no intention of becoming part of your father's business empire.
I'm going to build my own." Time for the final scene of this little
drama. "I didn't come over here to play
business games, Victoria."

"Then why did you?"
she purred. One hand rested on his side,
and he could feel the heat of her small hand through dress shirt and coat.

"I
came over here
to play a different sort of game altogether," Lex said. "One we used to
be fairly familiar with. One-night only, you know the rules. If you
want to play, I'll be in my limo."

He detached himself
from her and headed for the door, but he only got three steps away before he
heard the quiet click of high heels behind him.
He came to a stop and turned, to see Victoria grinning up at him with that
porn-star mouth. He had some really fond
memories of that mouth.

"Made up your mind,
then?" he asked.

"Daddy's going to
be disappointed that I didn't manage to snag you, Lex," she said. "But if we're not going to play with money,
then I'm certainly not going to say no to something else."

"Excellent," he
said. "Just let me notify Clark that he won't be needed for the night."

"I'll come along,"
she said, even though nothing in his voice had invited her on this little
side-trip. "I'd like to meet the famous Clark."

"Alright," he said,
because he couldn't think of any reasonable explanation to say no, and reluctantly
led her across the room to where Clark was
still leaning against the wall. He
straightened as Lex approached, his expression questioning, but it shut down
when he saw Victoria
in tow.

"Clark, this is Victoria. Victoria, Clark." He watched with a sort of morbid fascination
as they shook, Clark's larger hand practically
swallowing hers in its grasp. It was an
interesting metaphor, if he was letting himself think of those sorts of
things. "We're going to be headed back
to the penthouse tonight. I'm not going
to need your services." In any sense of
the word.

Lex had been
expecting to see many things on Clark's face
after that pronouncement. Anger, upset,
hurt, even jealousy. Those would have
made sense to Lex after the time that Clark had
spent seducing him in his own subtle way.

Instead, he saw Clark look understanding.
He smiled, and nodded, and his eyes said clearly that he knew exactly
what Lex was doing and it was okay.

Lex abruptly felt
sick. What the hell was he doing? He didn't want
to be with Victoria. The last time he'd ended up with her she'd
tried to steal all his business secrets, and even though he'd seen right
through her and had screwed her over royally, he'd felt disgusted with himself
and somewhat unclean, and had vowed to never touch her again. And he'd decided to break that tonight for…
what? Panic over the fact that he'd
really, truly, wanted Clark? What was he trying to accomplish,
anyway? Prove that he was straight? Prove that Clark
didn't really mean anything to him?

And Clark, of course, saw right through it. And he obviously didn't mind, wasn't the
slightest bit jealous. And why should
he? Lex was so embarrassingly obvious in
his substitution- could he have picked a girl that looked any more like a
female version of Clark? Probably not, and Clark seemed to understand
perfectly well that if Lex really took her home tonight and fucked her, that
he'd really be fucking Clark.

Which he wasn't
going to do, not tonight. The whole
affair just seemed so stupid and childish under the weight of Clark's
sympathetic gaze. With that in mind, he
suddenly turned to Victoria and said,
"Actually, Victoria,
I don't think I'll be taking you home with me tonight, after all."

Victoria was a stone cold bitch, but she
wasn't stupid. She didn't make a scene,
didn't even let herself get offended, which meant that she'd grown as person
since their last encounter. Instead, she
just shot a considering look at Clark, who was standing there, hands tucked
easily in his pockets, looking utterly at ease with the situation. Which, knowing Clark,
he probably was.

"I'm sorry to hear
that," she said finally. "As things go,
it would have been a hell of a game." She
shot another glance at Clark, and then said,
in a lower voice, "But I guess you're on a different playing field now, aren't
you?"

She was gone before
he could reply, and he wanted to laugh. Had
he actually thought that he'd missed playing mind games with her? Jesus, he hated them. Why had he been so drawn to Clark
from the very first? Because Clark had been beautiful, and otherworldly, and he played
no games. God, he was stupid.

"I'm sorry," he
blurted out, but Clark just grinned at him and
rested one hand on his shoulder. For a
moment he forgot that they were in public, that people would be watching them,
that this was probably just fodder for the gossip mill that usually pissed him
off so much. All he was aware of was
Clark's hand on his shoulder, so much larger and warmer and real that Victoria's,
and Clark's smile, and the stupid grin on his own face that he was beaming up
at Clark.

"Nothing to
apologize for," Clark said, letting his hand
drop away. Lex mourned its warmth, but
reality was slowly seeping back in, and he was becoming aware of the annoying
whispers around them. "Let's go home."

"Definitely," Lex
said, and couldn't find it in him to object when Clark
grabbed his arm and towed him towards the door.

"I really like this
robotics project," Clark said three days
later, as they were doing the evening office work together. "They haven't just achieved the fastest
network connections thus far, they've also managed to create some rudimentary
responses to the environment."

"Which is a huge
step towards artificial intelligence," Lex said. "I know.
I just didn't realize that you were so interested in the project."

"My parents used to
have the spaceship that carried me here to Earth," Clark
said. Lex looked up sharply from the papers
he was reading. This was the first time that
Clark had volunteered information about his life before Metropolis since he'd
given Lex the rundown of who he was, where he was from, and what he could do.

"Used to? What happened to it?"

"It was trying to
control me," Clark said. "My biological father managed to implement
his memory and will into an artificial intelligence in the spaceship, which was
trying to force me to fulfill what he had decided was my destiny. He wanted me to rule the world."

Lex said nothing,
just listened as Clark told his story.

"I refused, and it-
he, I always thought of it as a him- threatened to destroy everything I cared
about. I destroyed it instead, and the
explosion caused my mother to lose her baby.
She'd wanted to be pregnant for forever, and it was my fault that she
lost it. That's why I put on the red
kryptonite and ran away. You know the
rest of the story."

Lex did, because Clark had told him.
The red kryptonite wore off, but left him with some seriously odd
psychological traits, including a tendency to fixate on things, or people. Like Lex.
He had stayed in Metropolis, clubbing and living a carefree life, until
he'd run into Lex and that was all she wrote.

"I want to see if
it can be developed into something that doesn't ruin lives," Clark
said. "Jor-El's AI was so twisted, and I
think it was because of who he was. I
want to bring into being a version that's a force for good, rather than for
destruction."

Lex
watched Clark in silence for a long moment. This was the first sign of
the younger,
farmboy Clark that Lex had seen since that
night in the club. Clark
had showed no signs of caring what other people thought, or even about
the fate
of people Not Lex, until now. Lex
wondered if Clark was finally healing whatever damage the red
kryptonite had
done to his brain and was coming out of his slightly sociopathic fog,
or if Clark hadn't really changed as much as he'd thought and
this was just the first he'd noticed.
Either way, it was something that Lex wanted to encourage, since he
didn't want to be responsible for quashing any nascent urges towards
morality
that Clark happened to feel.

"Would you like to
be assigned to the project?" Lex said at last.
"Officially speaking, I mean.
You've already had a hand in since its conception."

Clark
looked tempted, but he shook his head. "I'm
here for you," he said simply.
"Nothing's going to change that."

There were ways
around that, though, and Lex's brain quickly came up with one. "I've been thinking about taking a more
personal interest in Cadmus Labs anyway," he said. It had the advantage of being the truth,
since Clark had a disturbing habit of seeing
through his untruths. "My original field
of study was biochemistry, and now that LexCorp is solidly in the black and
running smoothly, I can take more time away from the office to work in the lab. So you could head the AI branch of the
robotics project and still watch out for me.
Fair deal?"

"I'm not going to
pull you away from the office to indulge my whims," Clark
said, quietly but firmly. Lex shook his
head.

Clark
thought about it for a while, then smiled up at Lex. "Deal," he said, and Lex grinned back in
relief.

"Deal."

Lex had many, many
reasons to be grateful to Clark. Saving his life several times headed the
list, but companionship normally ran a close second.

However, at this
very moment, Lex revised his usual third place reason- Clark's
acute business sense- to second place.
Possibly all the way up to first, except for the fact that he was pissed
enough to get into trouble again and he'd probably need Clark
to save his ass.

If Clark hadn't been there to look over his business papers,
then Lionel's attempt to take over LexCorp would quite possibly have been
successful.

"He just can't
fucking bear the thought that I don't need him!" Lex raged, pacing back and
forth across the plush carpet in his home office. "He raised me to be exactly like him, only
when I do what he did and broke away to run my own company, he's shocked! And, like the son of a bitch he is, he tries
to take my company away from me just to prove a motherfucking point!
He doesn't need LexCorp, and he doesn't need it out of the way, because
we're not even in competition with him! Why
the hell he can't just back off and leave me in peace I don't know, but he sure
as hell gets a charge out of making me miserable."

Clark
watched his pacing with impassive eyes from a safe distance, not that anything
Lex could do would actually harm him. The
corners of his lips kept twitching, though, and Lex knew that he wanted
desperately to laugh, and only Lex's genuine upset was keeping him from giving
in. Lex appreciated it, since he'd
probably be forced to punch him and break his fist if Clark
lost control right now.

The mental image
was ridiculous enough that Lex lost his momentum and just flopped back into a
nearby armchair, sighing as anger drained away and was replaced by
depression. "I can stop it this time-
I've already set countermeasures into motion- but what about next time, and the
time after that, and the time after that? He's got more experience, more knowledge. It's like he's holding the sword of Damocles
over my head. Fucking bastard."

"So we find a sword
of our own," Clark said easily. Lex looked up at him sharply.

"What do you mean?"

"Do you know how
easy it would be for me to break into the LutherCorp Tower?"
Clark asked.
"I x-rayed his office when we were in there last week for that business
meeting, and I know where all the safes are.
I'm sure he's got something blackmail-worthy in there. And even if he doesn't, I can still clean out
the safes just to prove a point, and I know he'll realize that it came from
you. Either way, he'll back off."

Lex blinked. Clark wasn't
pure as the driven snow by any means, but he also had never suggested anything
so brilliantly manipulative and… Luther-like, before. Was this a backslide from his desire to create
a helpful AI, or was this just part and parcel of Looking After Lex?

Either way, Lex
couldn't afford not to take him up on it.
"Go for it," he said. "Even if he
doesn't back off it'll still be worth it, imagining the look on his face."

Clark
smirked a little, and was gone in a blur.
Lex settled back, scotch in hand, to wait.

The operation was a
success, but the patient was dead.

Clark
had returned triumphant, not just with the materials that Lionel used to
blackmail other people but also with evidence of several crimes that Lionel had
committed. The next morning he'd called
Lex's office and they'd had a pleasant chat in which they threatened each other
and agreed to a mutual cease-fire, all without actually saying any words that
could be self-incriminating. Lex had
hung up, and that evening they'd gone out to a celebratory dinner at their
favorite place. God had appeared to be
smiling down at them when no paparazzi appeared to annoy them, and they'd gone
home in a good mood.

And naturally, Lex
woke up the next morning to three people standing in above his bed wearing dark
clothes, gloves, and gas masks. Because
God clearly wasn't smiling on him; in fact, he was pretty sure that God hated
him, because things like this always happened to him.

Apparently his
father hadn't decided to back off after all.
Why had he believed him, again?

He called out for Clark, but there was no answer. No blur of color followed by a very large,
pissed off alien taking apart his attackers.
That was a very, very bad sign.

"Your little boy
toy is dead by now," the largest one growled.
"We gave him enough gas to knock out an elephant."

And Lex should have
stopped worrying right there, because nothing could kill Clark, right? Except no one had ever tried gassing him
instead of stabbing him or shooting him, and what if his metabolism couldn't
break it down? Obviously something had
happened, because Clark would be in here now otherwise, which meant that Clark was either dead or unconscious, and the thugs
sounded really certain…

"If you're gonna
kill me too, would you just get it over with?" Lex said. The man responded with an unpleasant laugh,
which Lex found particularly ominous.

"We're not here to
kill you, Luthor. We were paid to take
care of your little watchdog and then take you to a secured facility and await
further orders."

In other words,
they weren't going to kill him, just kidnap him and probably kick him around a
bit. But Clark
was dead, so none of that mattered, did it?

"Man, I just love
Luthor family drama," a wonderfully familiar voice drawled from the
doorway. Lex's eyes shot towards the
place where Clark was standing, dressed in
only a loose pair of black drawstring pants and looking pissed as hell, and the
sight of him was so amazingly welcome on so many levels that Lex didn't even
take time to wonder about the vicious, ropy scarring on his chest. "I hope Lionel paid you three a whole hell of
a lot, because you're going to need it to cover the hospital bills."

"How the hell are
you-" the talkative one started to snarl, but Clark
reached out and casually picked him up by the throat. The other two charged him, and he caught them
both by the backs of their shirts with his free hand, and carried his burden
like it weighed nothing over to the open window.

There was a long
moment of silence, and then three loud thuds.
Lex just stared at Clark, barely able to believe that Clark
was alive, much less than he'd just killed three of his father's henchmen.

"They're not dead,"
Clark said, in response to Lex's look. "There was a truck full of junk right below
the window. They're bruised, concussed, possibly
cut and most likely have a few broken bones, but they're not dead." He shrugged, and without a shirt it was just
way too distracting for Lex's peace of mind.
"I knew you wouldn't want me to kill them."

"They told me that
they killed you," Lex said, his voice oddly flat. "And I called, and you didn't come, and I
thought that you were dead-"

Clark was across
the room in a flash, wrapping long arms around him and pulling him close to Clark's warm body.
Lex let himself be pulled, and settled into Clark's
embrace that felt nothing like sex and everything like comfort.

"I'm so sorry I
wasn't able to protect you," Clark whispered
against the top of Lex's head. His
breath tickled, and Lex shook his head in negation to Clark's
words.

"I didn't care
about that," he said. "I thought you
were dead. Nothing else mattered anymore." He was going to hate himself for that
confession later, he knew, but he couldn't regret it now, wrapped up in Clark's arms.

Clark
sighed and rubbed his smooth cheek against Lex's temple. "I wasn't
dead," he said softly. "The poison knocked me out for a couple of
minutes, but it was enough. If it were
summer I wouldn't have even been sleepy, but I'm weaker in the winter
without
the sun around as much."

And that was a
fascinating bit of trivia that Lex was going to want to explore later, but right
now he was more concerned with Clark's soft
words that were taking him apart inside.
"I'd never leave you, Lex. You
have to know that. I couldn't bear to
leave you behind."

It was everything
he'd ever wanted to hear, and if he was anyone else, he'd be kissing Clark right now.
Only he wasn't anyone else, he was Lex Luthor, so instead of a kiss he
brought his arms up and tentatively wrapped them around Clark's
waist. He didn't have it in him yet to
actually kiss Clark, so a hug would have to
do.

A hug would more
than do, if the rough sound and abrupt tightening of their embrace was any
indication. Lex sighed and rubbed his
cheek against Clark's chest, remembering the
scarring only when it caught against his skin.

"What is this?" he
asked, reluctant to break the spell but oh so curious, bringing his fingertips
up to gently trace the upper line. Out
of the corner of his eye he saw Clark's hand
twitch, like he wanted to snatch Lex's hand away, but he stilled it and
permitted the touch.

"The ship did it to
me," he said. "You could say it was part
of the lead-up to deciding I needed to destroy it."

"It looks like the
breastplate of Alexander the Great," Lex said, his fingers moving down over the
curve of the S. "What is it really?"

"Symbol for my
house," Clark said. "When I was on red kryptonite it used to
burn, but after it wore off the scar was just there. I'm not sure why it hasn't gone away- either
Jor-El is still trying to make a point, or he just doesn't care anymore. Either way, I'm stuck with it."

"I like it," Lex
said, pressing his thumb against he bottom point. "I can't believe that I hadn't noticed it
before." He looked up at Clark with a smile.
"Your t-shirts are usually tight enough."

Clark
shrugged and smiled down at him. "I'm
good at deflecting notice, when I need to," he said. "It keeps me out of trouble." His expression darkened, and he scowled down
at Lex. Funny how that expression wasn't
scary anymore, now that it was on the face of his Clark
instead of some random stranger who'd saved his life and wanted to fuck
him. "Speaking of which. If I hadn't thrown off the poison when I did,
they would have gotten you away. And I
couldn't have stopped them."

"You can't blame
yourself for that," Lex said. He wasn't
surprised that Clark was doing this, had even
expected it. "There was nothing you
could have done."

"Actually, there
was," Clark said. "If I was sleeping in here it wouldn't have
happened." Lex went very, very still,
but Clark kept going. "You made a rule at the beginning of this and
I've respected it, but circumstances have changed."

"Clark,
I'm not…" Ready. Possibly not even able to face the sheer
intensity of the thought of having sex with Clark.

"I'm not talking
about sex," Clark assured him. "Just sleeping."

Lex relaxed a
little at that, but he still wasn't sure.
Sleeping with Clark was the kind of
image that dreams were made of. The
really good dreams, the ones that you woke up from smiling instead of sticky,
and Lex didn't know how to let anyone that close. Even Clark.

Then again, he'd
already broken one rule for Clark, hadn't
he? He'd said it was going to be just
business between them, and now it was so much more. And if he was being honest he'd admit that he
wouldn't have changed a single thing that had happened between them. So why was he fighting this?

Fear of intimacy is
what it boiled down to in the end, and Lex had already become more intimate
with Clark than he had with the women that
he'd fucked. "Alright," he said, then
cleared his throat and said it again, this time with more strength. "Alright, you can sleep here." He pinned Clark
with a stern look. "But you have to take
the right side. I like to sleep on the
left."

"Or we can both
sleep in middle," Clark said with a grin, then
planted a fast kiss onto Lex's forehead and was gone from the room. Lex heard the shower start and flopped back
onto the pillows, a silly smile that he would deny to his dying day creeping
across his lips. Clark
was so… Clark.
Brazen, presumptuous, pushy, manipulative. Gorgeous and sweet and Lex's best friend, and
when it really came down to it Lex didn't mind a bit.

His day started
with a phone call.

He woke up alone,
though he was pretty sure he remembered falling asleep with Clark's
arms wrapped around him. Or was that a
hallucination brought on by wishful thinking?

Then Clark appeared in the doorway, dressed only in the
drawstring pants that Lex remembered from last night, scar clearly
visible. Not a hallucination, then, and Clark was holding out the phone, which was still ringing.

"It's Martha," was
all Clark said, and he tossed the phone to
Lex, who caught it reflexively and answered it.

"Hello?"

"Lex, I know that I
don't usually call you and it's not supposed to be during breakfast but there's
something of an emergency down here."

Lex blinked. "What sort of emergency?"
"There's some sort of… mutant, flying…
somethings," she answered hesitantly.
"No one knows what they are, only that they keep carrying off cattle,
dogs, horses- we're afraid that they're going to start on people next, and they're
so fast that no one seems to be able to shoot them. Could you help?"

Not without Clark, no, and he might not be willing to go to
Smallville. He covered up the mouthpiece
of the phone with one hand and looked challengingly at Clark. "So?"

"Deal," Lex said,
and turned his attention back to the phone.
"Clark and I will be down there as quickly as a helicopter can get us
there, Mrs. Kent."

He heard her suck
in a surprised breath. "Clark?"

Well, how else are
we supposed to deal with an otherwise invulnerable mutant? But he didn't ask that, because she was so
clearly upset. "Yes, Clark. He's asked me not to have any reunions,
however, so I'm telling you to stay clear so that he doesn't get mad at
me." He shot a grin at Clark,
knowing that he could get away with this, when maybe no one else could. "However, if you can catch him anyway, now
that I've warned you, it's no longer my fault."

Clark gave him a
disgusted look and left the room, but Lex heard banging in the kitchen seconds
later so he knew that Clark wasn't truly
angry. "Oh, thank you, dear," Martha
said with a sigh. "When will you be
leaving?" Her voice veered back to anxious.

"As soon as we eat
something," Lex said, and then said goodbye and hung up the phone.

Clark was waiting
for him with an already-cooked breakfast (Lex sometimes blessed Clark's superspeed and heat vision, and those times were
generally like these) and an unhappy look.
Lex ignored it and sipped at his coffee as he grabbed his plate and
headed back to the kitchen table.

"I really don't
want to see them, you know," Clark said.

"They want to see
you," Lex told him with his mouth full. "And
if you care that much about it, why are you going back at all?"

"I said I didn't
want to see them, not that I wanted people to die," Clark
pointed out exasperatedly. "Besides, those
meteor mutants are my fault. If I hadn't
been sent to Earth-"

"They're not your
responsibility," Lex said. "Though I'm
not saying it's wrong to stop them, since at least in this case, I'm pretty
sure you're the only one who can."

Clark
nodded, then pinned Lex with a glare that used to be pretty damn scary. Before he knew Clark
as anything but the superhuman boy in the club.
"I don't want to see my parents, Lex.
I don't care if they want to see me.
I'm not their son anymore, and the sooner they understand it, the better
off everyone will be."

"Alright then," Lex
said. He still planned on arranging a
meeting of some sort, but there was no point in telling Clark
that. Clark would either figure him out
ahead of time or fall in with his plans- either way, Clark
didn't need to know now.

Clark
finished his breakfast at about half-speed, finishing in a minute instead of
seconds as he was capable of. "I'll go
call the helicopter," he said, getting up to put his dishes in the sink. "If we do have to go back to Smallville, I'd
just as soon get it over with."

Lex grinned to
himself and took another bite of breakfast.

The helicopter ride
was interesting. Lex looked around with
a mild sort of interest, but Clark started the
ride by shutting his eyes closed tight.
Lex prodded him in the shoulder, and Clark
shot him a vicious glance before closing his eyes again.

Interesting. His invulnerable alien was afraid of heights.

"You know, we're
not going to fall out of the sky," Lex pointed out. "And even if we do, you're not going to get
hurt. So where's the problem?"

"Don't use logic,
please," Clark said, his eyes still closed. "It never helps, and it's annoying as hell."

So Lex didn't try
to point out the illogic of his fears.
Instead, he exclaimed constantly at this landmark or that cloud, until Clark was opening his eyes and glancing at them out of
reflex. Lex hid his smirk and continued,
and by the time they reached Smallville Clark was peering around with interest,
his original fear of heights completely forgotten.

They landed on the
lawn of the Luther ancestral mansion, and Clark
disembarked with fluid ease while Lex eased himself out uncomfortably, stiff
from the long ride. They moved far
enough away that they weren't caught by the back draft as the helicopter took
off again, and then Clark handed Lex his cell
phone.

"Call, get me a
location, and then stay in the mansion. I
want to get this over with."

"Alright," Lex said
amiably, and was just starting to dial when a piercing female voice rang out
over the lawn.

"Clark Kent!"

Clark
sighed, then turned around. "Chloe. Fuck off."

A short girl with
blonde hair that stuck out like quills came storming across the lawn until she
was standing practically nose-to-nose. "No,
you don't. You do not disappear, fuck
around Metropolis and stay in the papers every day, and then show up in
Smallville and expect to be rid of me that easily. You just don't."

"Sure I do," Clark said. "Go
away. You're trespassing."

"Clark,
what the hell is wrong with you? We used
to be friends!"

"'Used to be' being
the operative words there," Clark said. "I'm not your friend. I'm not him.
Give it up."

"You couldn't have
changed that much," she insisted. "Come
on. At least talk to me."

"As appetizing as
that prospect sounds, I'm actually here on an errand," Clark
said. "Lex, call and get me a location,
would you?"

But Lex was looking
up at the sky, his eyes going wide. "Um,
Clark?
I think I've got a pretty good idea of the location."

Clark
looked up and saw the large, flying, feathered somethings, all three of them, diving down towards their little
group, and cursed. Loudly, and with
great creativity.

"Lex, get her out
of the way, would you?" Clark said, and took
off at a run. He was moving fast, but
not so fast that they couldn't see him, and they banked in the air to chase
after him. Lex grabbed Chloe- who was
she, anyway?- by the upper arm and dragged her off his lawn and into the stone
archway of the front door.

"We should be safe
here," he said, but she wasn't paying any attention to him. In fact, she seemed rather focused on the
spectacle on his lawn, and when he followed her gaze, he could understand why.

Clark
had snapped the neck of one of the… were those chickens?- and was straddling
the back of another, with a third hovering above him and screeching and
snatching at him with its claws. Clark's expensive shirt was getting sliced to ribbons by
the alarmingly sharp talons, but his skin was of course unmarred, and the third
chicken was obviously getting frustrated.

It stopped trying
to cut him and changed tactics, grabbing him around the waist and trying to
lift him up, away from the other mutant chicken. Clark
shouted something that was probably a curse and reached up, wrapping both hands
around one thick leg and twisting. The
bone snapped with a sick-sounding pop, and the chicken screeched with pain and
pulled away, allowing Clark to break the neck of the chicken he was sitting on
and moving on to the one with the broken leg.
There was another snap, and then all three of them were lying dead on
Lex's lawn, and Clark was standing in the
middle of them, covered in feathers and looking pissed.

Lex, unable to
resist the urge, started a slow clapping.
Clark shot him a vicious glare and
blurred across the lawn, fetching up right in front of Lex and ignoring Chloe's
shocked gasp.

Lex just stared
back at him, managing to look down his nose at Clark
despite the differences in their height.
It was a talent he'd cultivated over the years, and it was coming in
handy now.

Clark
abruptly relaxed, rolling his eyes and shooting Lex a quick grin. "You're not as funny as you think you are,
you know," Clark said, and Lex just shook his
head.

"I'm always as
funny as I think I am," he retorted, and ignored Clark's
disbelieving snort.

"Oh my god," Chloe
said, staring at Clark. "I always thought that there was something
different about you, but you're really-"

"You're the friend
of the mealy-mouthed little kid who used to live here," Clark
said. "I'm not him anymore. You don't even know me."

"So give me a
chance," Chloe snapped. "I'd have to be
a total moron to miss your metamorphosis into an asshole, so give me a little
credit and don't assume that I think you haven't changed. I know you have, and I want to know you
anyway. Why won't you let me?"

Clark
let an explosive breath, eloquent of his frustration, running both hands
through his hair. Lex watched with a
barely-suppressed laugh as a few stray feathers fell to the floor and made
absolutely no effort to pretend that he wasn't enthralled by this little back
and forth.

"Chloe, I'm leaving
Smallville as soon as we can get the damn helicopter back," he said. "When are you going to have time?"

"My dad is getting
a job transfer to Metropolis," Chloe said.
"So I'm moving in a month or so.
I'll have plenty of time."

Clark looked helpless,
which was something that Clark never looked, and
Lex really wanted to laugh this time. Little
Miss Chloe was someone that he could definitely respect, and he suspected that
he might want to get to know her better.
It wasn't just anyone who could get Clark
to back down like this. Most of the
time, even he couldn't get Clark to back down
like this.

"Chloe. You really don't want to get to know me. I'm not a nice person."

"Lex seems to like
you fine," she said with some asperity. "And
he has higher standards. I think I can
handle the new you."

"But-"

"No," she
interrupted. "Promise me that you'll
look me up when I get to Metropolis."

"Chloe-"

"Promise."

Her voice held
absolute steel, and Lex's respect for her grew by leaps and bounds. She would be a hell of a journalist, and he
was already mentally making arrangements for her to have an internship at the
Daily Planet. He had no doubt that she'd
set the place back on its ears.

"Will it make you
go away?" Clark asked, sounding almost
pleading. She nodded sharply.

"If you promise."

"Fine, then. I promise to find you when you move to
Metropolis. Good enough? Will you go away now?"

"Yes," she said,
amiable now that she'd gotten her way. "Remember
that I will hunt you down if you go back on it, though."

"I won't go back on
my promise," Clark said. "Now go away.
I want to get the hell out of this town."

"I'm going," Chloe
said, and started walking. She paused
before she got more than a few feet, though, and turned back to give him a
serious look.

"Go see your
parents, Clark. They really need to see
you at least once."

"They don't know
me," Clark said, stubbornly repeating the same
line he'd been feeding Lex. "I'm not the
son that they miss."

"Yeah, but you are
their son. It's that whole unconditional
love thing that parents have. They love
you no matter who you are, which means that they love you even though you are
kind of a dick. Now get your butt over
there, Kent,
and make nice."

"I don't do nice," Clark pointed out, and she rolled her eyes.

"Then get over
there and play dead. I don't care. Just go."

"You're going to
harass me again if I don't, aren't you?" he said plaintively. She grinned at him.

"Yep."

"Fine," he
said. "I'll go over there for a minute
or two. Good enough?"

"Good enough, ET,"
she said, and smirked at him over her shoulder as she sauntered off.

"I like that girl,"
Lex said in the silence after her departure.
"She has qualities."

"Yeah, like being a
pain in my ass." Clark
shifted restlessly. "She really will
make my life hell if I don't go now. So
can get go over there and get it over with?
I want to get back to the city.
Smallville gives me the creeps these days."

"As it would any
sensible person," Lex said. "Alright."

Clark
smiled at him. "Thanks, Lex," he said,
and Lex smiled back.

"Anytime, Clark."

The meeting went
fairly well, Lex judged. Clark was largely silent while his parents hugged him and
exclaimed over him, and by the end of it he was even relenting enough to hug
back. Martha hugged him too, and thanked
him for bringing her baby boy back to her, and Jonathon Kent hung back and shot
suspicious looks in Lex's direction.
Jonathon didn't have any use for Luthers, if Lex remembered correctly, and
the man probably blamed him for Clark not
coming home.

Clark
may have been less reluctant by the end of it, but it was clear to Lex that he
was relieved to be out of the house and driving away in Lex's car. The tense lines of his shoulders relaxed a
little and the frown lines at the corners of his eyes smoothed out, and he was
Lex's Clark again, gorgeous and filled with leashed power.

"Can we never do
that again?" Clark asked, his head lolling
back against the seat. "Please. I'll do whatever you ask."

"I'm sure we can
manage to avoid it in the future," Lex said.
"What about Chloe, though? You didn't
ask me to keep her away from you."

Clark
grinned at him. "Yeah, well, Chloe's
scary. I fear her wrath." The grin faded, leaving a more serious look
in its wake. "Also, Chloe's
different. She's moving back to
Metropolis, and she'll be closer."

"Like that makes a
difference to someone who can run the distance in five minutes," Lex said.

"It's not the
distance," Clark said with a shrug. "It's the place. Metropolis is my home now, and Chloe's always
been a Metropolis girl. My parents are
Smallville people. They don't get it the
way she does."

"I understand," Lex
said, and Clark smiled at him again. Lex was addicted to Clark's
smiles.

"Lex, you
understand more than anyone," Clark said. Lex smiled back at him and tried to ignore
the warm, fuzzy feelings coming from the vicinity of his heart.

They drove in
silence the rest of the way, and Lex pulled into the garage. They went into the mansion, and Lex went to
call for the helicopter while Clark waited by
the front door.

There was a message
on his cell from his father, telling him to call back as soon as possible. Frowning irritably, he decided to get it over
with before he headed back to Metropolis, and dialed his father's number.

"Ah, Lex," his
father answered, sounding entirely to self-satisfied. "I'm so glad that you got my message."

"What's so
important that you had to get ahold of me right away?" Lex asked. "I'm a bit busy."

"I'm sure," Lionel
said with asperity. "Spending a little
quality time with your boy toy, Lex?"

Lex sighed. "Do you have something important to say, or
are you just being annoying, as per usual?"

"By all means, talk
away," Lex said, already bored. His
father's games were just so… tiring.

"Just a moment,"
Lionel said, and there were a few rustling noises, followed by the click of
some sort of player being turned on. Lex
was staring out the window, watching the green lawn and the three giant dead
chickens. He stiffened with shock when
he heard Clark's voice, grainy from recording,
saying, "I'm going to fucking kill you, Luthor."

"You tried to have
Lex kidnapped three hours ago," Clark
said. "If you ever touch him or even
come near him ago, I will kill you."

"My security team might
have something to say about that," Lionel replied, still sounding amused. "As would the Metropolis PD."

"If I wanted you
dead, you'd be dead and I wouldn't get caught," Clark
said. "And trust me, I will follow
through with it if I have even the slightest suspicion that you've done
anything to harm Lex in any way. Am I
understood?"

"Perfectly," Lionel
said, and Lex heard the tape click off.
He stood in shock, still staring at the chickens on the lawn, unable to
think about anything but the rough, dangerous growl he'd just heard. Clark. Threatening to kill his father. On Lex's behalf.

"Did you catch all
of that?" Lionel asked, sounding supremely smug.

"Yes, I did," Lex
said, because he had to say something.
"Why did you show this to me?"

"I just wanted you
to know about the man you're sleeping with," Lionel said, the smirk evident in
his voice. "Right after you drifted off
asleep in his arms, Clark came over and threatened
to kill your only family, and then came back to make you breakfast. Are you sure this is the kind of man you want
to be involved with?"

Absently, Lex made
a mental note to have Clark sweep the
penthouse for bugs. It was possible that
Lionel was guessing about how it had happened, but it was more likely that there
were some recording devices in his home.
Those would have to be taken care of.

The rest of his
brain was processing what Lionel was saying, analyzing it, fitting it together
in the greater puzzle that was his life and making sense of it. The answer that eventually came trickling
through from the back of his brain was this:

Clark is everything to you.

From there it was
simple.

"Father, you may be
my flesh and blood, but Clark is my family,"
Lex said. "Now kindly fuck off."

He hung up the
phone with a satisfying click, and then wandered out of the room in a
semi-daze, looking for Clark.

Clark's
face lit up with a grin when he came into the hall. "Lex! The
helicopter's here, so we can get the hell out of this place and head for home."

Home.
Lex was struck by the fact that this was what he had with Clark, when he had never had this before. A home.
Such a simple word for such a mind-boggling concept.

"Alright," he said,
moving closer. Only about five feet
separated them now. "You ready now?"

"I was ready to
leave the moment we landed," Clark said with a sigh.
"Come on, let's get out of here before any other mutants show their
faces and keep us from going back." He
reached out and snagged Lex's wrist in one hand, hauling him closer. The distance narrowed to slightly less than a
foot- too little for most people, but normal for them. Clark had a
habit of invading his personal space, until he didn't even notice that he was
doing it anymore.

"Clark-"
Lex started, but shut his mouth when he realized that he didn't have anything
to say. Clark's expression turned
intent, focused, and Lex remembered it from the club, from a dozen times when
he'd thought that Clark would make a move, but Clark
had always turned away at the last minute.

Clark
wasn't turning away this time. Lex's
stunned brain catalogued several irrelevant details as Clark
slowly bent his head and closed the distance between them. His shirt was wrinkled. There was a chicken feather still stuck to
his collar, and a small rip just above the knee in his jeans. His hair was disordered. His lips were wet from the tip of his
tongue. There was a beauty mark on his
cheek, and smile lines around his mouth.
This close, Clark's eyes looked more
blue than green.

And then Clark was kissing him- their very first kiss, despite two
tumultuous first meetings and weeks, months of teasing, and it was absolutely
the best thing that Lex could ever have imagined. Nothing like kissing a girl at all, and this was so much better. He was never going to think about girls
again, never going to think about anyone but Clark because there was never
going to be anyone but Clark, for the rest of
his life. Clark
was scalding, sexual heat wrapped up in months of safety and companionship and
friendship, and nothing could ever, ever compare to this.

Then Clark was
pulling back, and when Lex could focus again, Clark's
expression was the most open and serious he had ever seen. One big hand came up briefly to cup his face,
and Lex turned his cheek automatically into the caress, and then Clark dropped his hand and was stepping away.

"C'mon, Lex," he
said, grinning like mad. "Our chariot
awaits."

He took off at a
human-speed sprint across the lawn, jumping neatly over a chicken head and
laughing loud enough for Lex to hear from the doorway. Lex watched, absolutely still, as Clark came
up to the helicopter and jumped up, turning around to face Lex, the grin on his
face a white blur in the middle of tan skin, as he hooked one arm around the
handhold at the doorway and waved at Lex with the other.

He looked like a
kid at that moment, a very tall, adult-looking kid that Lex couldn't help but
want to do some very dirty things with, but still a kid. Young and carefree, and Lex couldn't help but
hear Clark's threats to his father echoing in
his ears. Was Clark
dangerous to him?

And then he
remembered the kiss, and the look on Clark's
face afterwards. Lex was afraid to put a
name to the emotion he'd seen there, but he knew it, nevertheless.

No,
Clark would never be a danger to him. Mind made up, Lex waved back at
Clark and started across the lawn, swinging wide to avoid
the dead chickens. He felt fresh and
new, his decisions made, his path in life decided. Clark was
his path, his choice, his everything.
And he was waiting for Lex.

Today was the first
day of the rest of his life.

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